Lost
by girastelle
Summary: Three sisters are stolen from their father's farm by three mysterious, inhuman captors. Loosely inspired by Twilight and set in an indeterminate past, this story explores a darker side of the Cullen boys.
1. Chapter 1

_My blistered feet turn bloody_

_So I take to the air_

_And I am everywhere, I am starlight,_

_Oh, I am moonlight._

_- Shearwater, "Lost Boys"_

We should not have stayed out so late.

But tomorrow was market day, and Father insisted that there must be at least three bushels of potatoes left in the last field by the edge of the wood. My sisters and I had tarried too long in idleness where the wildflowers grow under the hedgerow, and now as blue twilight crept over the fields, we rushed back to our work before night could fall completely.

Alyse danced ahead of us, a tiny wood-sprite in the dimness, prattling to herself, pausing now and again to sift her fingers through the dirt in desultory dreaminess. I might have called to her to mind the work, but she was a child yet, only eight years old. There was time enough for strictness and scolding.

Rose worked steadily beside me, lovely Rosaleen, my proud, golden sister. Two years my elder at sixteen, and the village beauty, for all that we spent our days bent over the rows of potatoes and cabbage. We worked without talking, in the steady rhythm of long familiarity: I found the still-rooted plants, she drove the long potato fork down into the earth with a confident push, and I pulled the plant up while she stomped the fork sideways and lifted the tines through the resisting soil. In the gathering darkness we sifted dirt and roots quickly, dropping the sound potatoes into one basket, the soft diseased ones into another. Rose tramped the dirt flat while I sought another plant, bent double, fingers brushing the earth.

At the end of a row we paused. Rose thrust the fork into the soil with her easy swift grace, then straightened, pushing her fists into the small of her back. "Alyse should not run so far off – it will be full dark soon," she said. I nodded absently, peering into the gloom for the child. "Alyse, love!" Rose called out, her clear voice ringing across the rows of trampled plants. "Come back, sweetheart!"

She strode away toward the edge of the wood and I watched her go, wishing for a moment that my hair could glow golden like hers where it escaped her kerchief, even in this fading light. But Alyse and I were drably dark, like our father, while only Rose had our mother's golden curls. And Rose had indeed been mother to Alyse, and to me too, since our own mother died when Alyse was but a baby. I liked to think I had done my share of mothering for her, elder though she was.

I turned to the next row and found a plant to pull, though I struggled with the heavy fork in Rose's absence. "Alyse!" came Rose's voice across the field, and again, "Alyse?"

I sighed and stabbed the fork back into the earth. _The silly child has lost herself in the woods again,_ I thought. There would be no finishing tonight until we found her. I set off after Rose, whose white apron made a pale smudge in the dusk. Then her voice rang out again, rising sharply: "Isobel!"

And all of a sudden the pale smudge was gone, and a sound like the cry of an animal came keenly through the air, cut strangely short. Fear clenched tight in my belly, and I ran. Was Alyse hurt? Was there a snake, or a wolf? The heavy fork would have made a powerful weapon, if I could wield it, but I had left it behind and there was no time now to turn back. The uprooted potato plants caught at my bare feet and I stumbled in the uneven soil. In the blue light I could see nothing at the edge of the wood but tangled darkness.

I stopped at the edge of the wood. "Rose?" I called, my voice strangely high. Was that movement, deep in the shadows?

With a crash, a pale figure burst out of the underbrush. A flash too fast for sight, and I was trapped, lifted bodily off my feet, my arms pinioned by a terrible strength. One cold hand clamped over my mouth. I struggled in panic as I was dragged into the black wood. _Outlaws_, I thought wildly. They must have taken my sisters as well. Alyse was just a tiny child and no sane man would touch her, but Rose was a woman grown and lovely, and there were horrors aplenty for a girl in the hands of desperate men. I shrieked, though the sound was muffled, and kicked out at my captor.

"Be still," a voice hissed in my ear, a voice strangely accented and husky as if with disuse. "It will go easier if you are still."

I heard sounds of struggle and looked to see Rose, fighting like a trapped cat in the arms of another pale figure. Her eyes rolled in terror, and her captor – tall and strongly built – released one of her arms, raised his hand, and brought it down in a crashing blow across her face. I cried out into the hand over my mouth as Rose collapsed bonelessly.

_ Save us_, I cried silently. The world went black.

***

I woke in a flickering darkness. I was facing a wall of rough stone, and someone lay humped up in a heap beside me. Golden hair poured out over the stone floor – _Rosaleen._ I rolled toward her, ignoring the ache of bruised limbs.

"Rose," I whispered urgently, shaking her shoulder. She didn't stir, but I heard her sigh, and went limp with relief; the blow to her head had not killed her, and from what I could tell, no one had meddled unduly with us yet. And perhaps Alyse had gotten away before the outlaws took us, perhaps she had run home to Father and perhaps the men of the village were on their way already with staves and firebrands. They could not have taken us far; these caves were peppered throughout the hills above the village...

Then I heard familiar laughter, Alyse's high rippling giggle, and my heart sank.

I sat up stiffly, turning toward the source of the light. Alyse sat near a smoky red fire, bony little arms wrapped around her knees, and beside her was a man – no, a boy – a lanky boy, cross-legged and hunched, making shadow puppets on the stone wall.

I rose unsteadily. The boy turned his face to me.

I am not brave like Rose, but nor am I craven in my heart – I have often gone into the tavern to find Father when he has had too much to drink, and once I coaxed a rutting bull out of our cabbage field, all alone. But when this boy turned toward me my knees turned to water. His skin was silver-white, even in the ruddy firelight, and his long hair, though matted with grime, was as fair as Rose's, metallic and gold. I think that perhaps he should have been beautiful, as beautiful as an angel, as beautiful as summer. But his eyes glittered with a darkness that no firelight could touch, and his slow wide smile had nothing human in it. It was the feral grin of a jackal, a polecat, a screaming jay in a starling's nest.

Alyse looked up and saw me. "Isobel!" she cried in delight, and ran to me. "We're making animals on the wall!"

I shushed her before she could go on. "Alyse, you must mind me very carefully now," I said softly, keeping my eyes fixed on the boy's although I felt my blood chilling in my veins. If he were the only one guarding us here, if the others had gone off, she might slip past him and get away. "You must run as fast as you can, down the hill and all the way home. You must find Father and bring him back here." I risked glancing down at her, her dark eyes gone large and serious in her pointed little face. "See how fast you can find Father, my love!" I whispered, looking again into the glittering emptiness of the boy's face.

"No," said a voice. My heart plummeted in my chest.

Out of the shadows rose two figures. They stepped forward in the half-light, and I tried not to cringe back against the wall.

One was tall and dark-haired, with an ox's great shoulders, scowling like a thundercloud. The other was shorter and more slight. His hair was the color of the firelight, red and bronze, smoky, tousled, wild. I looked at the three of them – the two standing, the fair-haired boy still sitting hunched on the ground. All three of them had the same silvery pale skin, and all three had faces like angels in stained-glass windows, but the three sets of eyes looking at me were black and unfathomable, with no more feeling or warmth than if I'd been staring down three vipers. And even while I shrank from the feral emptiness of the fair one's smile, the malice pouring off the dark one in waves, I noticed in wonder that none of them was more than a boy – none could be older than Rose, perhaps not even older than me.

At that moment, Rose made a soft sighing sound behind me. Although I hated having those three figures, human yet inhuman, behind my back, I turned and dropped to my knees beside my sister. She rolled toward me, a frown between her brows, a great purple bruise mottling one side of her face.

"Isobel?" she whispered, only half-awake.

"I'm here, Rose," I murmured, stroking the hair away from her forehead.

She struggled toward waking, pushing herself feebly upright. Seeing the stone walls and firelight, putting a hand gingerly to her bruised cheek, she said, "Where are we?"

"It does not matter," came the strangely accented voice behind us. Rose looked up behind me, and I watched her face as she saw our captors – her eyes widened, and her skin paled further. She scrambled to her feet, gripping my hand tightly.

Together we faced them, Alyse looking between us in some consternation. It was the third one, the bronze-haired one, who had stepped forward to speak. He seemed to be the leader.

"Where are we?" Rose repeated.

"It does not matter," the leader said again. I thought I recognized the voice that had spoken in my ear as they had captured us, but that couldn't be possible – this boy, not much older than I, could not possibly possess the strength I had felt.

"What do you want of us?" Rose demanded. _My brave sister,_ I thought, clinging to her hand. "If it's ransom you want, our father can pay nothing, and the men of the village will be searching for us."

"No ransom," said the leader boy. "You are ours now."

I shrank in closer to Rose, who glared in defiance. If they were going to try to hurt us, she would fight them. I felt strength flowing from her into me.

Yet the boys made no move toward us, simply staring with their unblinking eyes. I felt the tension growing between us, tight as harp strings. At last I could not bear the silence. "Who are you?" I burst out. "We have never seen your kind here. Where did you come from? Where are the men who stole us, and why did they leave you alone with us?"

The biggest boy, the dark one, made a bitter barking sound. I realized belatedly that it was laughter, horrible laughter, as if from a throat that has forgotten how to laugh, forgotten anything of joy. "Who are we?" he spat, speaking at last. "We are no one."

"No one!" shrieked the fair one, still grinning, rocking backward and forward.

"There are no men," said the leader, searching my eyes.

"But – But I – " I began, not understanding.

"No men," he said again.

Again now the silence stretched between us. I held Rose's hand.

It was Alyse who moved, little Alyse all unheeding, and she walked back to the fair one where he sat hunched, great pale empty hands draped over his knees. She crouched down and touched his wrist. "Can we make animals on the walls again?"

He looked into her dark eyes, his wide grin fading, and in the uncertain light I saw a shadow pass over his face. For a moment, a frown creased his brow; for a moment, there was memory in his eyes, and pain. Then the moment was gone, his angel's face blank and smiling, and when he raised his hands a great dark bird flapped on the wall.

Rose and I faced the two boys, wondering what could happen now. Rose put up her chin. "Might we have some water, at the least?"

The leader looked full at her, his head a little to one side. "Water," he said, a sort of light dawning in his face. "For drinking." It was almost a question.

Rose snorted. "Of course."

The leader turned to the dark one, who nodded and disappeared into the darkness.

The leader seemed to be finished with speaking, and Rose and I settled uneasily near Alyse. I took up the corner of my apron and dabbed it wet in my mouth, then wiped gently at a streak of dried blood on Rose's cheek. She searched my face with her wide blue eyes.

"Isobel, I'm frightened," she whispered.

I nodded, glancing toward Alyse, who was giggling and clapping at the shadow puppets. "As am I."

It was some minutes before the dark one returned, bearing a chipped jug. He set it down beside Rose, who looked up at him. "Thank you," she said.

He looked intently down at her from his great height, then in a heart-stoppingly swift motion he was crouching beside her, his face only inches from hers. Rose shrank away from him, but his hand shot out and caught a tendril of her hair.

"No – please – no – " she said, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her into his lap. I seized the hem of her skirt, ready to pull her back, but all he did was push her kerchief back off her head with one great hand, then with unexpected gentleness he touched her golden hair. Rose sat still, eyes closed, hands clasped tightly in her lap, trembling like a bird.

There is no worse feeling than powerlessness. I could not help Rose; I could not run, I could not call for anyone. I could only watch her pale frightened face as the boy stroked her hair over and over, letting the brilliant curls wrap around his fingers, stretching them out to their full length before they tumbled to her shoulders again. His free arm was clamped inexorably around her waist. The cave was silent but for the crackle of the fire.

Pinioned there between my two sisters, each captured in her own way, I felt that something in me must break. I looked up and over the firelight at the leader, who was staring at me. The beauty and utter chill of his face tore at my heart.

"Who are you?" I asked him again.

He didn't answer me.

"Why are you doing this?" No answer.

I cast about for something, anything. My hand hit against the jug of water, and I realized how thirsty I was. I brought it to my mouth and drank, then looked back at the boy, who was still watching me with something of hunger in his face. I held the jug out toward him. "Water?"

"We do not drink," he said, and his voice seemed to come from far away, from deep underground, as if he had reached back a long way to find the words. "We do not sleep. And we cannot die."

I shivered long and deep. If he would not speak sense, I would not speak to him any more.

The silence went on and on. At some point I saw Alyse curled up with her head on the fair one's knee, and even Rose let her head drop back against the dark one's shoulder with his fingers tangled in her hair. I must have lain down myself, and the dark one must have released Rose, for I felt her where she lay behind me, her back pressed to mine.

The night had gone somehow. The fire was nothing but dying embers, and I saw faint daylight, which must have shown the direction of the entrance to the cave. The three boys sat together there in a circle.

I sat up. The fair one looked toward me and grinned his slow grin. His teeth were dark as if with wine.

Alyse was gone.

**********

**A/N: Standard disclaimer goes here. Recognizable names (even archaic ones) belong to SM; everything else is mine.**

**This is my first published fanfic, and I'd love to hear what you think!**

**The inspiration for this story fell into my lap while I was listening to the kickass and hilarious Twigasm podcast, and they mentioned the story The Lost Boys by hwimsey... and without knowing anything else about the story, I started thinking about the Cullen boys, and Peter Pan's lost boys, and this story popped into my head more or less fully formed. So I owe a debt of gratitude to hwimsey, even though my story has nothing to do with hers (though I have gone on to read it, and it's incredible, and you should all go read it too.)**

**If you're the kind of reader who likes to have a soundtrack for a story, go check out Rook, which is a great album by the band Shearwater. I listened to it on repeat while writing this.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to those of you who are reading and reviewing -- if you like it, pass it on!**

**Wouldn't it be nice if I owned these characters? Alas, I do not.**

*******

_Over burning fields and bodies_

_I stay close to the ground_

_Slipping miles from the arches and arc-lights_

_Into the warm night._

_- Shearwater, "Lost Boys"_

Rose and I could do nothing. We could not get the boys to answer us when we asked where Alyse was, whether she had run away, whether they had done something to her. We screamed, we wept, we pleaded. Maddened by worry, I tried to run past them toward the daylight, and found myself caught, lifted as easily as a child, and deposited again at the back of the cave. Rose kicked over the jug of water and I narrowly prevented her from flinging it against a wall.

They would not speak to us; they would not acknowledge us.

Exhausted, hungry, regretting the loss of the water, Rose and I sat together with our heads bowed. The day passed in silence.

After long hours, I lifted my head to see that the light from the mouth of the cave had dimmed to blue dusk. Rose's head was down on her knees, but I saw the shine of her open eyes. The boys were finally stirring. I did not see him rise or hear him approach, but the leader was standing over us. He looked at us, at the empty jug and the dead fire, then he picked up the chipped crockery and disappeared out of the cave.

Rose and I waited. Time had already stopped, and it made no difference for us to wait another hour. The other boys seemed restless, moving and pacing in the half-light, but never talking.

It was nearly full dark when I heard him return. The jug was set down with a soft _thunk_ beside my feet, and desperate with thirst I reached for it and drank deep before handing it to Rose. There was a soft patter of something hitting the ground near us, and I drew myself into a tighter ball. The hiss of a spark, struck I knew not how, and slowly the fire grew again.

Beside me, Rose gave a stifled cry, and I turned to see her snatch something off the ground. It seemed they had remembered that we must eat, for the things that had fallen to the ground were raw new potatoes. I seized one, heedless of dirt, not caring that it was raw, and bit greedily into it. _Perhaps this is from our own fields._ It was bitter and chalky, but it was food, and we were famished.

When I had bitten into my third potato, I looked up to see the leader squatting by the fire, watching me eat. I wiped my mouth, suddenly self-conscious of how dirty I must be, and his eyes followed the motions of my hands. Something about the searching in his eyes, the slight furrow of his brow, made him look like a child waking from deep sleep, trying to remember his surroundings, trying to reconcile his dreaming and waking worlds.

Despite their cruelty, despite their indifference and inhumanity, my heart was seized with something like pity, as it would have been for any creature caught and confused. I held out the potato toward him.

"We do not eat," he said, but his flat toneless inflection had changed – there was almost a question in his voice.

"Who are you?" I asked again, unable to stop myself. He merely looked away, staring into the fire. But his body was tense and listening, so I tried again.

"Where did you come from?"

The pause after my words was long, so long I thought he was not going to answer. But then he said softly, to the fire, "Very far away."

The silence was complete. Rose had gone utterly still beside me, listening, and the other boys were so frozen in the half-light that they might have been statues.

"Who brought you here? Why did you come here?"

He turned his head back to look into my eyes. "We came here alone." I thought he would say no more, but then he spoke again. "We are always alone now."

I had not seen them move, but the other boys were close behind him now, drawn toward the sound of speech as if huddling around a flame. The fair one's eyes were glassy and distant, but the dark one watched with a naked hunger in his face. Rose, despite herself, was drawn in.

"Do you not have parents, or families?" she asked.

"No family," growled the dark one. The fair one shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.

"Parents," said the leader, again with the shadow of a question in his voice.

"Yes, parents," said Rose, and tears were close to the surface of her voice. "We have a father. We had a mother who died."

There was another pause while Rose bit her lip and tried to master her tears. The dark one put his head back and groaned softly. I ached inside. Then, unexpected: "We had _him,_" the leader said.

It was as if the air suddenly shifted. The fair one lifted his head as if scenting something. The dark one seemed to gather himself, like a thundercloud.

"Him," he rumbled.

"Carlisle," the fair one breathed, a name or an invocation.

The leader's face was twisted now, a smile full of pain. "We were with him. We were not alone."

"Who was he?" I asked. Rose thumped my leg with her closed fist, but I didn't care. They were finally speaking to us, and I dreaded the return of silence.

"Carlisle," said the leader. "We were his. He created us."

With a roar that made me startle like a rabbit, the dark one launched himself at the fair one. The fair one laughed, a high, mirthless bark, then they were a tangle of legs and arms, a vicious roiling knot. This was like the wrestling matches at the village fair, but rougher, wilder. Rose cried out when the fair one throttled the dark one, slamming his head against the stone wall, but the dark one seemed unhurt and soon regained the upper hand, wrenching the fair one's arm behind him and forcing him to the ground. With a twist that should have broken his shoulder, the fair one somehow slipped away, only to spring onto the dark one once more. On and on they raged.

"They will kill each other," Rose sobbed to the leader.

"No," said the leader simply.

As suddenly as it had started, it was over. The dark one fell back, snarling, grinning. The fair one threw his head back and laughed, high and cold. "Beautiful, my children, beautiful. You will be rewarded." There was a languid, aristocratic drawl to his voice, and I peered at him uncertainly, but he dropped back to his haunches, gibbering unintelligibly, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth. Rose gripped my arm and whispered in my ear, "I don't want to talk to them anymore."

"Sometimes he set us to fight each other so that he might watch," said the leader, watching us closely. With every passing moment, his voice was coming unstuck, as if he were remembering the pathways between one word and the next.

"Carlisle?" I asked. Rose's grip on my arm grew tighter.

"Sometimes he took us to his bed," said the leader, looking at me with his dusk-colored eyes.

Rose made a sound of disgust and turned away, but I nodded slowly. I thought I understood. I had seen how men in the village looked at Rose, how the butcher watched the swing of her hips and the swish of her skirt when she walked by. I had also seen the schoolmaster stare at Garritt the cobbler's boy with hooded eyes, seen a touch linger too long on shoulder or wrist. Two different hungers, but of the same kind.

"You didn't mind it?" I asked. His eyes glittered at me out of the icy beauty of his face.

"Did you love him?" I asked. Something like pain flashed through his eyes, and his lips parted.

"Did he love you?" I asked.

The dark one blazed into life. "He never loved us!" he roared, leaping up, and drove his clenched fist into the wall with enough force to break the bones of his arm. Rose jumped and clapped her hands over her ears. The fair one giggled. Rose was crying again, in frightened stifled gasps. The dark one peered at her through the firelight, then came crashing toward us with heavy steps. He crouched beside Rose and dragged her into his lap once more, pulling her hand from my arm as he trapped her effortlessly and wound his fingers into her hair. She pleaded with him to stop.

"He was golden like you," the dark one rumbled. "Sometimes he would touch us softly," he said, stroking her curls, "and sometimes..." His fingers curled in a fist, and he pulled, yanking her head to the side. Rose shrieked. The fair one watched with eager eyes.

"Stop him!" I cried to the leader, my own tears falling now. "He's frightening my sister. You're frightening us."

The leader merely looked at me, then at Rose, and there was no indication on his face that he recognized our fear, or cared. It was perfect, blank indifference – he neither pitied us, nor exulted in our terror. _He's not human_, I thought frantically, gulping my sobs. The dark one didn't pull Rose's hair again, but closed his eyes and buried his face in her curls.

"He was perfect," said the leader at last out of the stillness, his voice distant, and it took me a moment to realize that he was speaking of this Carlisle. "He was as a god, or an archangel. They came from far away to be near him, but he shone above them all." For the first time, there was life in his voice, and warmth. "There was always music, and feasting, and the light of a thousand candles, all at his command."

"Isobel," whispered Rose, so that only I might hear.

The leader continued. "He dressed us in silks and velvets," he said, and I could see the memories crowding in his eyes. "He sat me beside him and I drank from his goblet. He stood me up to sing for him, for everyone, but the songs were always for him. He petted me and caressed me. We were his favorites. We were his children."

"His children," whispered the fair one.

"I thought you said you didn't drink," I said.

"Isobel, stop," whispered Rose.

"It was not wine in the goblets," he said.

I swallowed hard.

"He called me by my name," said the leader, his eyes full of long-ago candlelight.

Somehow it had not occurred to me that he would have a name. If he did, perhaps something in him was human yet, and could feel and remember. "What was your name?" I asked him.

The candlelight in his eyes dimmed and drifted. I watched his face as the velvets and silks, the feasts and the music, slipped away, and he saw the walls of the cave. He looked lost, and then his eyes fixed on me. "My – my name?"

I nodded, and he unconsciously mimicked me, his chin rising and falling by the barest fraction. "My name," he said, his brow furrowing. I wanted to move toward him, to smooth my fingers over that wrinkle, so I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees and did nothing.

His eyes were searching, inward. "My name – my name was – was – Edward." It was only a breath. "He called me Edward."

I took a breath and held it, then let it out. "You are Edward," I said to him.

His eyes were full as he looked at me, of candlelight and firelight both.

"You have a name," he said in his questioning way.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't tell him," whispered Rose.

"My name is Isobel," I told him.

He leaned forward where he sat, as if to reach for me. "Isobel," he said slowly, as if the sounds were foreign to him, but I felt the gooseflesh rise on my arms at the sound of my name from his mouth. "Isobel,_ la bella, la bellissima_."

I didn't understand his words, but they were like a spell, like the trailings of the fisherman's net.

The fire seemed to spill out of his eyes now, flooding me. "_Isabella la più bella_, they would call you. In India they would paint your hands and your feet with gold, and line your eyes with black, and drape you in chains of gold and rubies. They would wrap you in satin and set you on a cushion and worship at your feet."

My breathing had gone fast and shallow.

"In Persia they would rub your body with scented oil and dress you in gossamer hung with ropes of pearls," he said, "and they would hide you behind veils of silk, and men would tear themselves to pieces for want of a glimpse of you."

Somewhere Rose was saying, "Don't listen to him." I was trembling.

"But in Venice," he breathed. "Ah, in Venice. They would bind you in corsets of silk and lace and set diamonds to glimmer in your hair like stars in the dusk. They would strap high jeweled slippers on your feet and hang sapphires around your throat. And the wine would brighten your eyes until they shone, and the blood would rush under your skin, and they would call you _bella, la più bella, la regina della notte._"

And as he spoke I could see it coming to life, the torchlight and candlelight, the drapings of red velvet and black silk. The tables piled with exotic fruits, whole roast pigs, birds of paradise with their feathers quivering. Chairs and couches where women and men lounged, entwined, in their bright plumage of lace and damask and brocade. Somewhere below me, oiled bodies writhed against each other under the languid gaze of onlookers. The silver goblet in my hand was full of a crimson wine, thick and rich as heart's-blood. And this must be Carlisle beside me, a golden archangel, terrible and beautiful and cruel. He reached for me with a hand with vermillion nails like talons and thirst in his face.

Then my vision swam, and it was no longer Carlisle beside me, but Edward – not lost or broken but beautiful and whole, a smile on his lips, and untold promises in his eyes.

"_Bella,_" he whispered. "_Bellissima._"

My skin was icy and white like his, and we ruled this place together, undying, forever young, forever beautiful.

"Isobel!" hissed Rosaleen.

My sight cleared, and I found myself on my knees, reaching toward him, yearning toward him. I snatched my hand back. He closed his eyes and the fire released me, and I was only Isobel, dressed in homespun wool, frightened, dirty, hungry.

I pushed myself clumsily back toward Rose, shaking. The dark one dragged her out of my reach with a snarl. The leader – Edward – turned away.

I curled into a knot of bones in the unbroken silence, then lay down alone. The boys neither spoke nor moved. I did not want to sleep, but I did, although my dreams were full of darkness and firelight, so I could hardly tell the difference between sleeping and waking.

When I awoke to daylight, I was alone. Rose was gone. I put my head down again and closed my eyes.

*******

**Translations from Italian: **_**bella**_** means beautiful, of course, and **_**bellissima**_** is very beautiful. **_**La più bella**_**, the most beautiful, and **_**la regina della notte**_**, the queen of the night.**


	3. Chapter 3

**I'm putting my author's note up here because I'd like the end to just be the end. So: thanks for reading this creepy little story! If you like it, take a second to hit the review button, and if you really like it, pass it on. Thanks to hwimsey and the Twigasm ladies for the inspiration, however inadvertent it might have been, and big thanks to my wonderful sister and sounding board, mllebojangles, the coolest chick I know.**

**SMeyer owns everything, but my words are my own.**

*******

_Winged children, all_

_Will fly over the mountain wall_

_To the lid of the sky_

_And slice its belly full wide_

_With their warm knives_

_Not the pin-pricks of starlight_

_But to bathe in the bright blood_

_Of the world above._

_- Shearwater, "Lost Boys"_

The daylight waxed and waned while I lay still. I opened my eyes to white refracted noon; I opened them again to the gold glow of late afternoon. I opened them at last to blue dusk. The boys were moving in the cave's mouth.

I pushed myself up to sit against the cave wall, all alone. _This is the end,_ I thought. _This is the final night. First Alyse, then Rose, then me._ I struggled to find some fear inside me – some anger, some urge to fight or fly – but found only a deep still sadness. I had been made for more than this. This should not be all there was to be.

The leader – _Edward,_ a voice inside me insisted – came once more to stand over me. Just as he had done the day before, a heartbeat ago, a lifetime ago, he took the water jug and disappeared.

He was gone a long time, much longer than he had been before, and the world narrowed and dimmed until the cave was as dark as the inside of my eyelids. I did not like being alone with the two boys where I could neither see nor hear them, but I waited and thought of stillness, of the tree in the forest, of the rock in the field. I would be like these.

At last I heard him returning, his light step loud to my ears full of silence. He went first to the fire, and when the spark caught and grew, he turned to me with what he had brought.

A rough burlap sack, stolen perhaps from field or barn, but heavy in his arms. He turned it over and shook out the contents at my feet. I watched, astonished: potatoes, apples, carrots and beets and radishes, whatever had been left in the late-harvest fields; mushrooms scrabbled from the forest floor, handfuls of what looked like late blackberries, crushed into indigo pulp. Two loaves of bread, surely stolen. A skin of what must be wine and half of a small wheel of cheese. A bottle of milk, half-spilt. Strings of sausages, snatched down from someone's rafters. This was an embarrassment of riches, more food than a family could eat in days. I looked up at him, bewildered.

"For you," he said simply. "My _bella_."

"Isobel," I mumbled. He merely looked down at me with uncertainty and eagerness in his eyes. I thought suddenly of feasts by candlelight, tables laden with extravagant delicacies. _A sorry court this is, _I thought, looking at my filthy hands, my bedraggled dress. He was doing for me what he could. It seemed there was room enough in my heart to ache for him as well.

"Thank you," I managed. He took his customary seat by the fire, not far from me. The other boys sat in the shadows, watching and listening. My stomach suddenly heaved with hunger and I lunged toward the bread, tearing it roughly with hands and teeth. I drained half of the remaining milk with one gulp, and it felt like sunlight in my belly. I gouged at the cheese with my fingernails until a piece broke off, and it was sharp and tangy and true in my mouth. My stomach cramped with the suddenness of it, but I didn't want to stop. The sausages were soft and half-cured, so I didn't dare bite into one, and I didn't trust him to know which mushrooms were safe and which were poison, nor could I trust my eyes in the flickering light, so I let them lie. But I ate nearly half a loaf of bread and made quick work of an apple, then finished the milk.

He was watching me closely as I wiped my mouth and put down the empty bottle. The exhilaration of food faded, and the tight knot of fear clenched again in the pit of my belly.

"Speak to me," he said suddenly. The other boys inched closer. "I want to hear your voice."

I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry despite the milk. "My sister is gone. Both my sisters are gone."

He didn't respond, no matter how hard I looked for some sign of emotion in his eyes – there was no pity, no remorse, no triumph.

"Won't you please let me go?" My words came out as a sob.

"You're mine," he said simply.

"Please let me go," I whispered. "My father will be so frightened. Let me go back to him."

His dusk-colored gaze followed my mouth. "Your father," he said.

I nodded, closing my eyes. "He's a farmer," I said softly. "His hands are always dirty, and his hair is dark like mine. He has been very sad for a long time." I could see him behind my eyes, his bent form in the chair by the fire in our little farmhouse, his distant eyes, slow to smile. "He loved my mother very much, and she died when I was only seven. He drinks too much ale sometimes." It was suddenly hard to speak around the tightness in my throat. "But he is never cruel to us. He plays the fiddle and he loves to hear us sing. When Alyse was sick with the ague, he sent me and Rose away and nursed her all alone so we wouldn't take ill ourselves. He tells the best stories you've ever heard."

My voice stopped, as if cut off at the very source. I would never see him again. I wrapped my arms around myself.

"I had a father," said Edward, his voice soft with memory. I opened my eyes. He was still watching me. "And a mother, and two little sisters. All together in a little round hut of mud and straw. He came and found me and took me away."

"Your father?" I asked, confused.

His eyes softened, gazing through me. "Carlisle," he said.

I shivered, remembering the golden hair and the cruel smile.

"Did you all have families once?" I asked.

"I did," came the dark one's gravel voice. "They beat me and I ran away. Carlisle found me."

"And you?" I asked the fair one. He just grinned his wide mad grin.

"His mind is all shadows; he won't remember," said Edward. There was a pause. "I went back to look for my family, after... after." _After Carlisle?_ I wondered. "They were gone. The little round hut was gone, the fields all changed."

I could hear the desolation in his voice, and suddenly it was as if puzzle pieces fell into their right places. Bits of stories and half-remembered legends. Their strange behavior, their strength, the way I knew without knowing how that they were not quite human. The echoes of hundreds and hundreds of years in the eyes of a boy not older than me. It explained everything.

"I know what you are," I whispered. His eyes didn't change. "You don't sleep. You don't eat. You were human boys once – you had families and parents – but no longer. I know what you are."

He said nothing. "Carlisle made you what you are," I said.

"Yes," he said at last. "We were with him for years and years and years. He was all we needed."

I finally understood, and the sickness of the knowledge settled heavy in my stomach.

"He showed us the whole world," said Edward softly. "He took us everywhere by night, and everywhere he ruled whatever he saw. We fed from kings and knights, maidens and courtesans, and they all fell beneath us. And we never tired, and we never grew old, never again."

"So what happened?" I asked. "Why are you here? Why are you alone?"

Pain twisted in Edward's face.

"Lost, lost, lost," crooned the fair one.

"He left us," said Edward. "He went away."

"Did he die?" I asked, perplexed. "Where did he go?"

"He didn't want us anymore," growled the dark one, the rage gathering on his brow.

"But where did he go?" I asked. "Why couldn't you follow him?"

"We couldn't find him," said Edward, his voice splintering like that of a child trying not to cry.

_ It is not me they want,_ I thought. "Please let me go," I pleaded. "It won't bring him back. It won't change anything."

"Nothing will change anything," said Edward. "Nothing ever changes, not anymore."

I sat back, closing my eyes. _Please make them let me go,_ I begged desperately in my mind. _Let me out of this hell they are trapped in, where they never grow old, where their minds are fixed in one place forever._ This Carlisle, whoever he was, whatever he was, had damned them to an eternity of enslavement. These were his children, his favorites, cast away like worn-out toys: angry and terrified and broken, never growing up, never finding their way home.

There was too much sorrow here – for these three beautiful boys, for my beloved sisters, for myself. I felt numb. An image rose unbidden in my mind, of Rose and Alyse, silvery-skinned and undying.

"Tell me where my sisters are," I said suddenly, opening my eyes and seeking his. "Tell me what you did to them. Did you –" I hesitated, swallowing hard. "Did you – feed – from them? Or did you make them as you are?"

Edward turned his head and looked into the fire. "What does it matter?"

It was hard for me to breathe. "I want to know whether to pray for their souls."

The dark one snarled, an ugly animal sound.

Edward said, "There are no souls, and there is no one to pray to."

"We can always pray," I said, my words sounding false and hollow to my ears. "We all have a creator in heaven."

"We had a creator," the dark one spat.

"And he left us!" howled Edward in anguish. Hundreds of years of grief, of loss; the lover cast off, the child abandoned. The sundering of his very heart.

"Lost, lost, lost," keened the fair one.

"You poor lost boys," I whispered. My heart was breaking too, in useless shards; I felt the edges slipping from my fingers.

Edward was close to me now, though I had not seen him move, and my pulse raced with his nearness. "_Bella_, my _bellissima_," he murmured brokenly, and his voice went straight to the depths of my inmost self and laid me bare.

"Isobel," I mumbled numbly. I was shivering now, uncontrollably.

His hand had encircled my wrist. "The time has come," he whispered, his lips at my ear, at my throat.

His arm went around my waist, pulling me implacably in. I looked around me in a panic and saw the dark one and the fair one, firelight gleaming reflected in their eyes as they gathered closer, watching hungrily. _It is ending,_ I thought wildly. He pulled me into his lap, his angel's face close above mine.

The tears slid down my cheeks, even as my body responded to him, melting against him, opening like a lover to her beloved.

"Are you killing me?" I cried. "Are you changing me?"

"My _bella_," he whispered, his cold fingers tracing my tears, stroking my face, my hair, my neck. "It will not hurt." His fingers twisted in my hair, tipped back my chin.

And he spoke truly, for when he brought his lips to my throat, his teeth were sharper than the keenest knife-edges, and I felt hardly a thing.

_-the end-_


End file.
